Fundamentals of marketing made easy
What will be the future of the product which has a world-class quality but hardly known by anyone? Of course, the future will be gloomy & the product may get out of the market. So what do you do in this situation? How can you make people aware of the product? Well, the answer will be the marketing of the product. Before we start marketing the product or service, we need to understand the basics of marketing. That’s what we will be discussing in this article.
To start with, what is marketing?
Marketing is nothing but making people aware of your product or service that you provide and eventually sell that product or service. Marketing is a vast concept with a lot of different aspects to it. Generally, we believe that the marketing process starts with market research and ends with sales revenue. However, the process doesn’t stop at sales revenue. It is also equally important to keep up with the expectation of the existing customers.
Let’s discuss marketing in detail.
- Market Research (understanding the economy) & Product/Service Creation:
The most significant factor that has a direct effect on any business is the economy of the country. The success of a business depends on the economic policies of a place where it is trying to prevail. A better understanding of economic policies helps in the success of a business. This stage comes before the marketing funnel kicks in. To perform market research before you implement your idea into a product or service is recommended. And once you have a clear idea about the economy & the market, product creation becomes a lot easy. After this step, the marketing funnel kicks in.
Marketing funnel:
The marketing funnel is the process that leads us to the sale of the product. It is a proven process to run a successful marketing campaign. Below mentioned are the stages of the marketing funnel.
Stage 1: Awareness
After all the research, you have launched your product or service in the market. At this stage, it is crucial to increase the awareness of your product or service. Communication will play a vital role at this stage. It depends on who is your right audiences and what message you are spreading in the market about your brand? It is a make or break stage. For customers to develop an interest in your brand, spread the right message. Educating the customer about the brand is more important at this stage. There are two ways to spread the message.
a) Traditional Marketing:
Anything which is not online is traditional marketing. It includes television ads, newspaper ads, radio ads, billboards, etc. Since our childhood, we have been familiar with this type as it is the oldest type of marketing. However, the drawback of this type of marketing is that we can not choose the right audience. For example: if you don’t have a pet dog, it is irrelevant to see the ad which promotes dog food. However, if you are watching television, the ad may be played. You have next to zero chance to engage with the customers with traditional marketing.
b) Digital Marketing:
It is a new type of marketing. Online marketing such as Social media marketing (Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Twitter ads, etc.), Google AdWords (PPC ads), Email marketing, Content marketing (blogs, articles), Video marketing (YouTube marketing) are some of the types of digital marketing. Due to the new age in technology, digital marketing is the most effective way of marketing. It gives you the option to choose your audience and makes your ad campaign more effective and fruitful. It is the most powerful way to engage with the right customers.
Stage 2: Interest
Now that you have targeted the right audience, it’s time to send the right message to them to engage them and create interest in your brand. Again, communication will play a vital role here. At this stage, your brand starts becoming strong. Customers start getting interested in your brand and, you can measure the interest with the response you get for the ad campaigns, landing page visitors, time spent on the website knowing your product or service. At this stage, the goal should be to engage the customer in product or service. Rolling out offers at this stage is good but shouldn’t be pushy for sales as it could be turn out to be a deal-breaker.
Stage 3: Consideration
Now that you have created customers’ interest in your brand, this stage will be vital to evaluate a potential buyer. If you have got the customer to this stage, that means he/she has spent enough time knowing your product or service. Talking about the features, advantages & benefits (FAB) of your product should be the goal at this stage. It would help the customer to decide to buy the product or service.
Stage 4: Evaluation
At this stage, the customer is aware of the product, is interested in the product, and has considered the product. However, there will be a lot of other factors that may affect the decision of the customer. When a potential customer gives a consideration, they may have considered other products as well. At this stage, customers will evaluate the best fit product for themselves. Highlighting the problem that your product can solve will give you an edge over the competitors.
Stage 5: Purchase/Sale
The new-age customers are intelligent. Evaluation of the product is done based on reviews and offers. A competitive offer & a problem-solving pitch at this stage can do wonders.
After going through the stages, you may be able to sell your product. However, the marketing doesn’t end here. There will be a lot of potential customers that you may lose at each stage of the funnel. Re-targeting them should be the next step. Apart from that, taking care of the existing customer is also important to spread positive word of mouth.
If you are a digital marketer and mostly work on content creation to attract customers. Then apart from the marketing funnel, you need to understand another funnel which is CATT Funnel. This funnel will help you to find the right niche to target the pain areas of the customers. It becomes easy to sell your product or service.
The formula for success is — Wealth = n^CATT
where,
n = Niche: Choose something you are good with and comfortable doing!
C = Content: Create content that attracts the customers and solves their problems.
A = Attention: Driving traffic to your content using ads on social media, SEO, etc.
T = Trust — Build trust of your customers with the quality of the content. It should provide value to the customer.
T = Transaction — Once you have built the trust, convert the leads into customers.
Niche is the combination of Talent, Market, and Passion. If either of these three is missing, the complete process fails. Now that you know the CATT funnel and the formula to earn wealth, it is significant to choose the right niche.
Another way to market your content is via integrated marketing. For great results (sales), advertise the content through different channels. Below mentioned image is the map of integrated marketing.
If you have good content, advertise it through Email, Paid Ads, SEO, & Social Media. Through all these channels, you will be able to drive traffic towards your content. Once you have people visiting your content, it becomes easy to convert them into sales. However, this will work better if you have implemented the CATT funnel as it will help you to select the right niche.
Behind every successful man, there is a woman. Similarly, behind every successful brand, there is a person who is as good as a brand. To make a brand successful personal branding is equally important. When we talk about personal branding, the very first name that comes to our mind is Elon Musk. Because people know Elon Musk, they know Tesla and SpaceX. The same goes with TATA. Though it’s not a single person, people know TATA motors, TCS, Titan, Tanishq because of TATA. Personal branding is essential to influence the business. A successful personal brand can boost sales. Example: Dogecoin sales increased when Elon Musk tweeted about it. However, a personal brand has its drawbacks. You can not buy a personal brand, nether can someone invest in it. A personal brand is crucial for building trust among prospects.
You will evolve as a personal brand by following the below-mentioned steps.
1)Learn: Learn the Skills
2)Work: Use the skills you learned in your work.
3)Blog: Write about the skills you have learned or the work you have done.
4)Consult: Help people to solve their problems with the skills you learned.
5)Mentor: Teach the skills that you have.
6)Startup: Start your business using your skills.
You can call this a MassTrust blueprint.
Using this as a guide for marketing, you may be able to achieve the desired success. However, “Good Marketing makes the company look Smart, Great Marketing makes the customer feel Smart.” — Joe Chernov
